Bangalore: The growing cost of education has become a major cause of worry for parents. Most parents usually spend more than Rs 18 lakh-20 lakh in raising a child by the time they are teenage graduates from high school, reported Himanshi Dhawan for TNN.

Parents spending on a single child's education has increased massively from Rs 35,000 in 2005 to over Rs 94,000 in 2011, said a recent survey. The spending was noted to be integral to the school curriculum like fees, books, transport, uniform, stationery, building fund, educational trips, extra-curricular activities and extra tuitions.

The cost of private education has always been excessive, but education in government-run institutions has also amplified greatly in the past one month with the HRD ministry increasing the under-graduate fees in IITs by 80 percent.

The decision to increase fees for undergraduate courses from Rs 50,000 to Rs 90,000 yearly was taken at the meeting of the IIT Council. In IIT, the student fees include only 30 percent of the entire operational cost of the institute. This decision is also taken at a time when the leading tech institutes are working to become self-sufficient.

Also, the rising cost of education recently has taken up major part of the household budget. 65 percent of parents spend more than half their take-home salary on their children's education, making it a major burden on their family budget, said an Assocham survey. As per government data, average costs on secondary education in private schools are as high as Rs 893 per month in comparison with just Rs 275 per month in government schools. This is chiefly due to the difference in soaring tuition fees in private institutions.

The cumulative public spending on education in the 11th Plan period is projected at Rs1244, 797 crore for both the Centre and states together. Around 43 percent of the public expenditure on education was noted to have incurred for elementary education, 25 percent for secondary education and the remaining 32 percent for higher education.

It was also noted that around half of the Central government's expenditure had incurred for higher education and the remaining for elementary (39 percent) and secondary (12 percent) education. The number in the state sector was about 75 percent for school education, 44 percent of which is on elementary education and 30 percent on secondary education.

It was seen that public expenditure on secondary education has gone up from 0.78 percent in 2007-2008 to 1.05 percent in 2011-2012.